Take 5 With John Force

16-time Funny Car champion John Force doesn’t claim to have all of the answers.

Is NHRA drag racing in trouble? If you log onto any drag-racing website or message board, you’ll be convinced that it is—and that it’s all the NHRA’s fault. For sure, attendance is down, ESPN has bumped race coverage for women’s college basketball, and a number of journalists and commentators feel the NHRA (headed by Tom Compton) is not doing enough to fix these problems. Everybody has criticisms, but no one has offered up a concrete solution.

“If I did anything wrong, I dominated for too many years. Drivers came and went out of the sport because they couldn’t win, they couldn’t beat me.”

16-time Funny Car champion John Force doesn’t claim to have all of the answers, either. As the NHRA’s most visible racer, Force is probably the least likely source to speak ill of the organization. But he recently found out his two major sponsors—Castrol and Ford (which have been with him nearly 30 years)—would not be renewing their contracts after 2014. The 64-year-old Force has a four-car Fuel team and a multimillion-dollar business dependent on those sponsors. In other words, if anybody in the game is feeling the pressure, Force is.

We sat down with Force for four hours at the conference table in his Yorba Linda, California, museum and former shop (the current race shop is in Indianapolis) to ask him some pointed questions. At first, he was hesitant, to say the least. At one point, we were afraid he was going to kick us out. But his respect for the HOT ROD audience focused him to the point that he demanded we ask him the tough questions—even the ones we’d deleted after our tense initial conversation. He didn’t shy away from any of them.

HRM] Why do you think Castrol and Ford, your two biggest and longest-term sponsors, left NHRA drag racing?

JF] Let me clarify this. I had 29 years with Castrol. If you add the very first year they put a sticker on my car and gave me $5,000, then I’ve been with them 30 years. That matches the longest-running sponsorship in history: that’s Bernstein’s 30 years with Budweiser, and I wished it could have gone on longer.

Castrol helped me build my brand and helped me with technology, them and Ford Motor Company. I wish them well, and they wish me well. You’ll never a get a bad word out of me. One, I’m under contract for another year, and number two, when I went to them and said, “Guys, I need to know where the future’s going,” Ford and Castrol could have waited until the middle of this year and then I wouldn’t have had the time to find another sponsor. I can’t complain. They thanked me for the job that I did and said, “Nobody will ever be greater than you in the sport.” And then we shook hands, and I’m working for them all year.

But I need to protect my family’s future. I’ve got a lot of things going on. I’ve got a restaurant pad in Indianapolis, I’ve tried to grow my business, my apparel stores, [and] I’ve got kids that are getting into this business for the next 40 years like me, so what I have to do is protect where I’m going, and I’ll be drag racing for NHRA—but I’m also going back to match racing.

HRM] Oh, really?

JF] I’ve asked my people to look at my budget. I have a huge budget, $24 million. I lost 40 percent of that. I lost a manufacturer. What I did was I took my budget back to when it was 40 percent less than what it is now. I have to go back to where I came from, just in case. And 10 to 12 years back in that budget, I match raced. I went away from it, so to survive I’ve gotta go back. I run for [Bill] Bader [at Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio] every year and make big money, but there’s some other places I’m gonna go. Key places where I know they can build in the safety and the tracks are long enough. Instead of running around the country testing on Mondays, I’m gonna start running match races to make some money so I can get to the next NHRA event. That’s all I’m doing. I just had a meeting with a group of people out of Canada, because when you look at sponsors, America [alone] is not big enough for global [companies]. There are tracks in Mexico that have been trying to get me for years.

HRM] So is that the plan for 2015?

JF] No. I haven’t set a plan yet, I’m setting the market. Global companies I’m talking to say, “Can you run in our country? We need to know that you’ll come here.” That’s what Formula 1 did, and that’s where I’m looking at going. I’m reinventing myself. I’m looking at how I can grow the image, so [I’ve] created my own traveling road show. Our trailer can carry up to five Funny Cars, and we [can] switch them out based on people’s requests or sponsor needs. My roadshow pulls into Colorado, say, and the cars go to five different Walmarts. We do cross-promotion with NHRA like ticket giveaways and they pay into my road show like the sponsors do, and it gives them a lot of promotion and exposure. I’ll go to NASCAR races with Bruton Smith, I go to IndyCar races, do a little bit of everything. That’s the traveling road show. I did that to protect the sponsors and I still lost ’em. But the new sponsors I’m talking to love it. Those companies, maybe they just did their time with John Force, maybe it’s time to change. I’ve had this plan. Robert [Hight] and I have been talking about it. When are we gonna activate it? We’re not sure yet. If corporate America comes back, then maybe I won’t do all this stuff until I retire, but I don’t need to have five to six weeks off at Christmas going broke if I can be off racing making corporate America happy.

“We gotta change, because the world’s never going to be the same.”

HRM] Perhaps the most knowledgeable and respected journalist when it comes to drag racing is former Car Craft editor and occasional HOT ROD contributor Jon Asher. On CompetitionPlus.com, he recently wrote: “NHRA Drag Racing is at a major fork in the road. Taking the wrong turn could result in the continuing decline that we’re all sensing and often seeing. We’ve seen the empty grandstands in Las Vegas in April, at Chicago in June, and again in Charlotte in September—and others are just as weak.” Drag racing can’t continue like that, can it?

JF] Jon Asher’s a good man, a good writer. I don’t think he’s vindictive. He writes what he believes, and I believe that we should listen to people like him. He has a history with our sport, and I believe he writes about it because he loves it. He’s pretty knowledgeable about what goes on. But there are some things that I hear, that I know—that other people don’t know—like the state of the business. But let’s respond. Is the sport itself in trouble? Well, then you might as well ask is NASCAR in trouble, or IndyCar, F1, or [World of] Outlaw cars? We’re all in trouble. Well, why? Because of the economy. The economy is in trouble, number one. Number two [is] the cost of doing business: We still buy billboards on the freeways, we still buy magazine ads [even if an event is rained out], but you can go on the Internet and get anything you want. That’s how the world’s changing, and it’s putting huge companies in trouble.

What makes it worse is that the fans have so many options now. The X Games, they got the Olympics every two years—they have so many choices, everything they want they can find. And if they can’t get to the races, they can watch it on ESPN. It’s not the sport that’s failing, as Asher says, it’s the world around us changing.

HRM] Do you think the NHRA’s current staff is right for the job?

JF] What I’m giving you is the truth, but I’ll tell you what, if I really believed that Tom Compton and his team were bad—I’ve been fighting it already, I give you my word on that—the day I believe they’ve gone wrong and the day that I believe that PRO has gone wrong, I won’t be associated. That is the way I do business. I’m an old God-fearing guy, and if I’m going to sit down with God someday…I’m not going to live in a world where I have to lie. I embellish, I don’t lie.

HRM] HOT ROD did a blog post last summer about you being the right guy to be president of NHRA. If Tom Compton were to step down right now, would you want that job?

JF] No. If Compton was to step down, no, I’m not the guy. [But] Compton’s not going to step down. He’ll retire and somebody else will come in that he sets up. Or a big conglomerate might buy [NHRA] someday, we don’t know. Tom and I talk all the time. Tom’s a good guy, he’s struggling with what he has to work with, and he’s fighting a lot of stuff because everyone has an opinion. Maybe they ought to walk in his shoes once. I only know that I would not be the right guy. I always said that Kenny Bernstein could be [the] guy, and I’m not comparing him against Tom Compton, but he’s a plenty savvy businessman. But the truth is, I’ve never run a business like that.

Wally [Parks] put on shows. He went to the track and put on a show. Wally got into the business and did a pretty good job, but I used to be at races and see him carry the money to the bank in bags in the back of his car. There were no Brinks trucks like today. They were making money and they didn’t know how to get it to the bank. Then the bankers come in from Ontario Motor Speedway, that group, and now it’s been passed on to Compton. So, no, I’m not the guy. Thank you to whoever said it, but no. I will continue to help NHRA and work with Tom Compton, and work with the PRO organization. And I’m not sugarcoating it—this is what I do. If it ever just falls apart, I’ll just keep match racing. But it ain’t gonna fall apart, it’s too good of a product. You can still put people in the stands. They’ve cut overhead, the same thing I’m doing. But you can’t cut safety.

HRM] A lot of the complaints we’ve heard are about the television package the NHRA has with ESPN. Specifically that ESPN sometimes bumps NHRA races in favor of things like women’s basketball or Little League games.

JF] I think ESPN does a great job. But just like [in] reality TV, to make it exciting they have to write scripts. I did reality TV and it started changing. In the old days, Steve Evans got out there and interviewed you and whatever you said he took it from there, and they bleeped you if you cussed. When a driver climbs out of a race car and you put a camera in his face, you get his adrenaline. He’s won, he’s lost, he’s mad—you’ll get the real world. But what they’ve done because of TV—I know how to try to capture that moment—they have to go back [to the starting line] because there’s another show coming, Pro Stock! And to capture that moment they gotta get back on the starting line, and they make the driver wait. It’s what they have to do to make it work. But you lose something in there—spontaneity—you have lost it.

HRM] Can you respond to the various polls, including HOT ROD’s, about the desire of fans to see the Fuel cars return to running the quarter-mile?

JF] Everyone blamed NHRA for that, but they went to a meeting with PRO. I was there. They said, “We want to go to 1,000 foot.” I was fighting insurance problems and thought 1,000 feet would be good. I didn’t know if it would slow us down, but I did know it gave us another 320 feet to slow down, because the racetracks are too short. PRO was pushing it, so Compton said OK and he addressed it. But have you ever looked at their side? If there ever was an event that was catastrophic and the insurance company said, “You went there where it was safer, and then you went back to get more people in the stands?” You [have to] look at his side. So I’m not arguing with what the polls say, because if I was a fan at the races, I’d like to see a Funny Car go 2 miles! I’d like to see ’em go as far as they can go, but I do know the grandstands aren’t even down there. I know we’re still running in the 3s, we’re still going over 300 mph, but you’re giving the driver another 320 feet of shutoff room.

I’ll be honest, I was one of the guys against going back. Because there are racetracks like Pomona, where there’s a golf course on one end and a railroad track on the other. Are we just going to keep going to the quarter-mile until we run 400 mph? It’s easy to take a poll. I’m old school, so I support the [people] out there for the fact that I understand why they want to go back, OK? But they don’t understand all of the negatives. Has anybody printed all the negatives and positives? Nobody wants to talk about the negative that it could put this sport out of business. In these polls, if they understood that the sport could go out of business if it went back, maybe they wouldn’t have voted that way. So it’s a losing thing for me to get into this, but NHRA came and wanted to go back. It was PRO that made the stand and went against that.

HRM] There don’t seem to be any real rivalries in drag racing, at least not ones that are played up by the organization like they are in stick and ball sports and NASCAR. Do you think that, and do today’s structured, sanitized public relations hurt racing?

JF] I hear people say, “You guys love each other too much! You oughta be out there fist fighting and killing each other!” In the old days, we fought it out in the parking lot. We punched it out. I had so many black eyes you wouldn’t believe it. Then one day I realized I better find a sponsor. When I got a sponsor, he told me, “If you go out there and get in a fight, if you cuss on TV, you’ll be terminated.” So we all started changing. All of a sudden, it wasn’t the Snake or the Mongoose or Cha Cha or Big Daddy, it was Wendy’s Hamburgers. Corporate America came in and changed us. And if you do that now, you get a $10,000 fine from NHRA. Joe Castello [from WFORadio.com] asked me in West Palm Beach last weekend [during a test session], “Why do you think next season is going to be any different? How can we get people to get rid of the camaraderie and turn it into a fight?” I said, well, if you try to turn it into a fight, it’ll be WWF. And I love to watch WWF and wrestling, but it ain’t what we do, and if you try to create that and have people start faking it, then you just ruined our sport.

I said in that interview that this year it’s gonna get more [tense]. Because the sport needs it? No, it’s going to heat up because the economy is causing everybody problems. The economy is causing people to lose sponsorships. Pressure’s being put on us more to win, and that’s gonna change a man’s personality. When a man gets out of the car and says, “I need to win because I gotta feed my kid.” then that fight is gonna get tougher. I saw it happen in Pro Stock with guys losing their money deals. I started seeing the fight, the pressure. Look at the world. I’ve seen a difference in the last year, I saw it in other categories; people started getting aggravated. And I knew it was about budgets. They needed that round, they needed that win and somebody screwed with them. I’m not trying to stir the pot, but you’re going to see change as it gets tougher to stay in business. I caught myself saying, “I need this championship to get corporate America to sign me up in 2015.” I about said it, I was right on the edge, but I didn’t say it. We gotta stay clean. It wasn’t about getting mad at somebody—in that moment, there’s other demons. As we go down this road, you’re going to see people letting go.

HRM] Has racing gotten too expensive, to where only the top teams and rich guys like you can compete?

JF] The technology has gone crazy. It’s gotten out of hand, the expense. Who drove it there? I was part of that. What it costs in computers now, I used to build a whole race car for. Computers cost as much as the chassis, motor, and body, and they don’t do nothing but tell you what the driver can’t. That’s when I realized that I could make this stuff cheaper than I could buy it. That’s why I build my own cars and make my own parts. I only build for myself, but because I’m losing a manufacturer, I’m going into business selling parts. I was going to sell to Top Fuel, but now I have a Top Fuel car, so now I sell to the people that’ll beat me with my own technology. I’m looking at selling to IndyCar. I’m talking to Graham Rahal, maybe I can manufacture for them.

HRM] What do you think of nostalgia racing, like the Hot Rod Reunions and March Meet? Those events pack the stands. Would you ever run a nostalgia car?

JF] I absolutely love it. That’s when the cars were the stars. It was Tom and Jerry, Blue Max, you know? I lived it. But if you go to corporate America, then they start saying, “Take that name Moby Dick off the side of the car and paint our name on there,” now you’ve lost your star. Hey, I ain’t got the answers. Like I said, it’s only my opinion and I’m not smart enough. I don’t want to race in nostalgia even though I love it. I want to clarify that it’s built its own brand across the country, but because of my safety and what I do, I would only run the 1,000-foot. I’ve promoted races before, I know what it takes to put on the race, but it just isn’t what I do.

HRM] Who is John Force’s hero?

JF] If I had to pick two people I’d like to see again in life, naturally, I want to see my mom and dad again—any family member I’ve lost. I want to meet Jesus some day, and I want to meet Elvis. I live on his music. Richard Petty was really something else. He taught me to stand at the ropes and fences and never leave the fans. I’d watch him stand there and never leave a guy in a wheelchair. And I thought, my God, never walk away from a wheelchair even if you miss the next session. If you have to, shove him up there with ya! In my sport, I love Garlits, love Shirley, but I was never a dragster guy. Don Prudhomme was my hero, always was. Him and Mongoose [Tom McEwen]. I raced Funny Car and the guy I chased my whole career was Don “The Snake” Prudhomme. I never caught him. I’m still chasing him to this day. He’s still my hero, still setting my goals.

There’s an old saying that my daddy taught me, when I was talking to him about how good I was and he said, “John, you’re starting to believe your own bulls**t.” So when the other drivers come up to me and say how good I am, I say thank you and then I go right back to that little trailer house I grew up in to keep my mind right.

Forceful Facts

Age: 64

Birthplace: Bell Gardens, CA

Years Professional Racing: 36

First Pro Race: John’s First NHRA race was the 1978 World Finals at Ontario, CA.

He lost to the late Gordie Bonin on a first-round holeshot.

First Pro Win: 1987 Montreal

Wallys won: 139

Championships Won: 16

Number of Family Members Racing: Five. Three daughters, one son-in-law, and one granddaughter

Number of Times He’s Lost a Race to One of His Family: John is 5-4 versus Courtney and 7-6 versus Ashley.

Quickest Elapsed Time: 3.965, national e.t. record (1,000 feet)

Force Races Bonneville?

John Force mentioned Bonneville and a desire to race there, saying: “Bonneville always intrigued me, the fact of going fast. Would I do it with an aspirated motor like a piston-driven car, no. I want to be the fastest on the ground. When I was driving a truck, I pulled into a Firestone and saw the Spirit of America. [Coverage of] Bonneville was where I saw the Blue Flame, and all the famous people that did that stuff, it was always a fascination. I was young and driving a truck in those days, and all they would have had to do was strap me in—you’re either dead or you’re a hero. But I went drag racing. It just turns me on, the speed.

“I’ll go there some day. It’s tough when you work seven days a week. There isn’t time to build another car. If you’re going to build a deal like that, you base it on three years. You start with the first year you build it and put a TV package around it, and it follows you like an A&E reality show. The second year, you go around the world promoting it, and the third year race in three other countries, and then you bring it to Bonneville. Bonneville is where you gotta go. But you bring a sponsor and with my name and my production company, I can make it happen. I can build motors, I’d hire engineers, a driver to teach me, I don’t do anything stupid. It would be a five-year project. I’m looking toward my retirement or if I had to get out of the seat, ’cause I want to race and they can never stop me from doing that. There’s no age limit [at Bonneville], so as long as my eyesight’s good, I’m OK.”